Illinois pays a private company, Wexford Health sources, more than a hundred a million dollars every year to take care of the medical needs of Illinois prisoners. But there’s evidence that the care is often terrible resulting in pain for prisoners and a bad deal for taxpayers. A new report by a non-partisan prison watchdog group finds that despite the huge amount of money going to prison healthcare, no one in state government is closely watching how that money is spent.

John Maki is having a hard time believing the findings of his own organization’s year-long study of healthcare in Illinois’ prisons.

Maki is the director of the John Howard Association.

They found that last year the state of Illinois signed a 10-year, one point four billion dollar contract with Wexford health sources.

But Maki says no one in Illinois audited the company’s previous performance in the state before signing the enormous contract.

MAKI: You know it’s one of those things, it feels bizarre that it’s not out there. It feels like surely someone must have done some kind of audit, right? Kind of like, right? That has to be there, and there should be some kind of public account of how this money’s being spent and there’s not, and again, if the John Howard Association can’t find it and this is what we do then certainly no ordinary citizen is going to find.

Maki says he went to the state’s auditor general who said they don’t audit private contracts.

He asked people at the department of corrections who said the contract was handled by the state’s department of healthcare and family services but when he went to Health Services they sent him back to IDOC — the department of corrections.

MAKI: Well as a taxpayer I want to know how my tax-dollars are spent. In particular, in our prison systems which are very expensive and which there’s very little oversight of, and to me that raises questions about good government.

When I contacted IDOC about Maki’s report, a spokeswoman emailed a statement saying Wexford got the highest score of four vendors who competed for the contract.

IDOC would not provide anyone to talk to us about that process or even to talk in general terms about the 1 point 4 billion dollar deal.

Maki says there’s some troubling history that makes the lack of contract oversight even more negligent.

Five years ago, Donald Snyder, the former head of the department of corrections pleaded guilty to accepting 30 thousand dollars in bribes from a Wexford lobbyist.

Wexford was never accused of wrongdoing and in an email a company spokesman said they actively cooperated with the investigation into the bribery scheme.

But leaving that history aside, Maki says there are even more immediate questions that need to be asked.

MAKI: Every year, we communicate with about three thousand inmates and their family. By far, the most complaints we hear are about medical care.

Over the past several months I’ve been reporting on Illinois prisons and I’ve heard lots of complaints about medical care too.

One guy, Chris Clingingsmith, told me a story that sounds too ridiculous to be true but the medical records seem to back him up.

Clingingsmith is suing the Illinois department of corrections in federal court but he’s representing himself and his lawsuit actually looks kind of like a grade school project.

There aren’t computers in prison and Clingingsmith can’t really type anyway so he drew lines on blank paper and then neatly hand-printed out his federal complaint.

CLINGINGSMITH: I just figured that whatever happened to me wasn’t right. I decided that I don’t think all that fancy jargon on there needs to be involved with legal work. I just write it how it needs to be written and send it.

I have to say, his plainspoken lawsuit reads much better than many of the legal filings I’ve seen.

It lays out his story of what happened to him in the prison in East Moline Illinois, where he was doing a seven year sentence for racking up several DUIs.

He was attacked by an inmate and knocked to the ground.

CLINGINGSMITH: I’m like on my back and I’m blocking his hits and then he kicked me in the ribs and I dropped my arms because it hurt. So when I dropped my arms he raised up and stomped me right in the face with his boot and I kinda went out for a few seconds. It knocked me out, I guess.

When he was able, he went to guards and told them that he had fallen and hit his face on a counter.

CLINGINGSMITH: If you know anything about the gangs and stuff in prison. You don’t want a gang after you, especially when you’re a non-gang member. I’m not affiliated with anything so I wasn’t about to go tell the supervisor that this guy whooped me in the kitchen.

Clingingsmith says the guards knew the truth about the assault because they had video of it and they sent him to solitary confinement for lying about it.

While in segregation he complained about his injuries and asked to see a doctor.

CLINGINGSMITH: Yeah I was nauseous, I had migraine headaches, my jaw hurt, I couldn’t sleep, I had blood in my urine I was just a mess.

Clingingsmith says when he went to the doctor the doctor looked at him for just a couple minutes and gave him some aspirin but that was it.

He continued to complain and got another appointment.

CLINGINGSMITH: They took me back to the doctor this time, and he was kinda being, I don’t know a good word for it other than pissy. I told him I got a broken jaw again and he goes, well how do you know you got a broken jaw? Where did you get your medical degree?

Clingingsmith was sent back to solitary and several weeks later was transferred to a higher security prison, something he thinks was a punishment for “lying” about how he was injured but that punishment ended up being a blessing because a dental assistant took his complaints seriously and took some x-rays.

CLINGINGSMITH: It happened to be where I was sitting in the dentist’s chair they have one of those x-ray lights and I’m in the chair and she comes back with the x-rays and she slides it into that light thing and she leans over and I lean over and we’re both looking at it together and she goes, “Oh my gosh. You have a broken jaw” and I said, “I know,” and she goes, “That’s ridiculous.”

At that point Clingingsmith got good care but it was drastic requiring his face to be cut open and he says the doctor used a hammer to rebreak his jaw and then put in titanium plates, a tension band and six screws into his face.

The operation was 8 weeks after his jaw was originally broken.

In that time Clingingsmith says he lost 60 pounds because he couldn’t eat.

His medical records show that for weeks after the surgery saliva and water leaked out of his neck where the cuts were made.

And Clingingsmith says all that could have been avoided if Dr. William Rankin at the East Moline prison would have just diagnosed him and wired his jaw shut when the injury first happened.

That’s part of the reason Clingingsmith is suing but because he’s no longer in prison he can’t utilize the expertise of other inmates in the law library and his case is starting to fall apart.

SOT:

According to IDOC Dr. Rankin still works at the prison but a spokeswoman declined to comment further because the case is still in court.

Wexford refused comment for the same reason.

When I reached Dr. Rankin by phone he said he also didn’t think it was wise to talk because of the ongoing lawsuit.

CLINGINGSMITH: I don’t think he should practice medicine. I don’t think he should be allowed to. If he can’t even diagnose a broken jaw when somebody comes in the office and says, ‘hey, doc, my jaw is killing me. I think it’s broken, I’m sure it’s broken,’ I don’t think he should be doing that job. That’s not the right gig for him. He should be doing something that he wants to do.

MILLS: It’s absolutely representative of the level of care. That sort of delaying of treatment until things get worse is typical.

Alan Mills is an attorney with the Uptown People’s Law Center and he brings a lot of lawsuits on behalf of prisoners.

He’s filed a federal class action lawsuit over medical care.

Mills often sues solely for injunctive relief.

That means he’s not looking for money, he just wants to force a change in the conditions.

That’s what he’s looking for in the medical class action suit.

As part of that case Mills has collected horror stories from prisoners.

He says one of his clients was complaining about ear aches for a year and every time he saw the doctor he was treated with antibiotic ear drops.

Turns out he had cancer.

Mills says another man, a diabetic, got a blister on his foot.

Mills says he wasn’t given the proper medication and the blister turned into a sore and because of the man’s poor circulation the wound got worse and worse and worse.

Recently doctors had to cut off a large part of his foot down to the bone.

MILLS: So a small problem which should have been easily solved at the beginning was left to sit and literally fester for months on end until it became a huge problem and that unfortunately is what we see all the time in the department of corrections putting off care that would be very simple at the beginning and putting it off and putting it off and putting it off until it becomes a serious problem which nobody can ignore any more.

In an emailed statement a Wexford spokesman said quote, “We assure you that Wexford Health holds our employees accountable just as any other company would,” and added that Wexford has no incentive to provide bad care because that would result in expensive lawsuits.

But Mills thinks Wexford tries to delay care until the inmate is released and is no longer their problem though he puts most of the blame not on the private health provider, but on IDOC.

MILLS: That kind of system can work but only if there’s a good quality control and somebody watching Wexford to make sure that they actually provide a good level of care and the department has not provided that sort of oversight at all. Their contract provides for that sort of monitoring but they don’t in fact do.

By email an IDOC spokeswoman said quote, “the department monitors Wexford through a comprehensive and continuous quality improvement process that includes monthly reviews.”

It’s tough to know exactly what all that means so I repeatedly asked to speak to someone from the department of corrections who could explain in practical terms how they monitor Wexford.

IDOC has refused citing pending litigation but, of course, there are always lawsuits pending against the department of corrections – that doesn’t mean there can’t be any discussion of how they oversee a billion dollar contract.

The spokeswoman did write that the department’s medical director visits each site once a year.

As for the doctors and their performance, she said Wexford is responsible for reviewing and disciplining them because they’re Wexford employees.

MILLS: You have to enforce a contract or it doesn’t mean anything. There’s nobody holding them accountable other than the courts.

MAKI: Right now we’re relying on court cases to provide oversight which should be taking place at the institutional level. If we get to the point of litigation, the problems already happened, right? Someone’s already suffered grievous injury. We want to prevent injury.

That’s John Maki again, the director of the John Howard Association, the prison watchdog group.

Maki says there are some doctors and medical staff who do heroic work.

Exhibit ‘A’ could be the dental assistant who immediately took x-rays of Clingingsmith’s jaw and got him the care he needed.

But Maki says other staff might not be as good and without oversight to enforce standards the system is relying on the goodwill of staff or court cases.

MAKI: Here’s what court cases can’t do. They can’t create a more effective system. They can chip away at it, they can restore someone who’s been hurt but they’re not good at building better systems of oversight. We need government to do that.

Maki says there are a lot of questions about this contract and about the kind of health services inmates are getting… and there are few answers.

It’s been my experience that this lack of oversight is part of pattern with the department of corrections.

It’s hard to know what’s going on in the prisons, facilities far away from Chicago, locked behind bars and layers of wire fencing.

For many months IDOC and Governor Pat Quinn have refused and continue to refuse WBEZ’s requests to visit prisons.

The information we do get from IDOC comes from emailed statements that aren’t always terribly clear or helpful.

John Maki’s concern with the healthcare contract could apply to much of what goes on in the department of corrections.

MAKI: It’s kind of like what Reagan said. “Trust but verify.” We need to verify this thing. We need to go in and make sure that what they say they’re doing, they’re actually doing. Right now all we’re doing is trusting. There’s no verifying going on.

Maki says given the history and all the complaints about healthcare and how much it’s costing the state… that just doesn’t make sense.

At the state’s prison watchdog… Maki’s official recommendation is that the Governor and legislature fund an independent audit of healthcare in the prisons to make sure that inmates are getting the care that taxpayers are paying for.

Wexford has had nothing but problems in providing inmate care. It was thrown out of New Mexico six years ago because many of the physicians and other professionals were complaining they were being forced to withhold urgent medical treatment, so that Wexford could boost profits. They also were not able to properly institute screenings to detect and keep communicable diseases from spreading.

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